Mailing machines for printing postage indicia on envelopes and other forms of mail pieces have enjoyed commercial success, both in the U.S. Postal Service and in industry mail rooms and private office environments. Generally speaking, there are many different types of mailing machines, ranging from relatively small units, which handle only one mail piece at a time to large, multi-functional units, which can separate, feed, weigh, print postage indicia on and stack hundreds of mail pieces per hour in a continuous stream operation. Thus, the modern mailing machine plays an important role in facilitating the rapid and efficient movement and other handling of mail.
Mailing machines have traditionally been capable of printing postage indicia either directly on mail pieces, or on pieces of tape, which are then attached to mail pieces. Typically, the mailing machine is set to print the postage indicia on envelopes as they are fed seriatim along a feed deck by a suitable feeding mechanism, the printing operation being carried out by a printing device that is part of a postage meter component of the mailing machine. The postage meter component has various control devices by which it can be set to print a predetermined amount of postage, together with other settable information, such as a date, within a pre-set design, the selectable information and the pre-set design all constituting the aforementioned postage indicia.
Regardless of which type of printing device is utilized in the postage meter, it is often necessary to print the postage indicia on a strip of tape, either gummed or adhesive backed, because it is not possible to feed the mail piece on which it is desired to apply a postage indicia through the mailing machine. In many situations, for example, the mail piece may be too thick to be fed through the normal feeding path of the mailing machine, or it may be too large in area, or it may contain delicate material that could be damaged by the pressure exerted by the printing device of the postage meter. For whatever, reason, there are numerous occasions in the normal operating situations of a mailing machine, where the postage indicia simply cannot be applied directly to the mail piece and must be applied to a strip of tape which is then suitably adhered to the mail piece.
Digital printing technology includes thermal ink jet (bubble jet), piezoelectric ink jet, thermal printing techniques, and LED and laser xerographic printing that all operate to produce images by dot-matrix printing. In dot-matrix ink jet printing individual print elements in the printhead (such as resistors or piezo electric elements) are either electronically stimulated or not stimulated to expel or not expel respectively, drops of ink from a reservoir onto a substrate. Thus, by controlling the timing of the energizing of each of the individual print elements in conjunction with the relative movement between the printhead and the mailpiece, a dot-matrix pattern is produced in the visual form of the desired indicia.
Conventional printheads that are used to print information on a medium suitable for mailing, such as an envelope or adhesive tape, which is affixed to an envelope, print postal indicia as the medium passes through an apparatus. One drawback to this is that the printhead is not able to print additional data on the medium as the medium is passed through the printhead.
One technique for controlling energizing of ink jet printheads is disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 5,815,172, issued Sep. 28, 1998 to Moh, entitled, “Method And Structure for Controlling the Energizing of an Ink Jet Printhead in a Value Dispensing Device such as a Postage Meter”. This patent is hereby incorporated by reference in its entirety herein. While the technique described in that patent is useful to generate encoder pulses to a motor to activate the motor and to move the printhead at a desired speed over a medium, it does not attempt to enable the printhead to print on a plurality of areas of an envelope or tape.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,184,900, issued Feb. 9, 1993 to Eisner et al., entitled, “Envelope Addressing System Adapted to Simultaneously Print Addressees and Bar Codes”. This patent relates to using one printhead for each address line, i.e., four lines would require four printheads. The printheads are mounted so at least two of the printheads overlap each other, which means that the printheads are positioned so that they are not in sequence with the numbers of the lines being printed. Transport rolls are mounted at either end of the printhead with no other transport rollers or transporting structures between the printheads. An electronic controller varies the time each of the printheads starts to print to correspond to the spacing of that printhead so that all of the lines may be printed with an aligned margin. This system does not enable a printhead to print various information on a plurality of areas of a medium.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,437,441, issued Aug. 1, 1995, to Tuhro et al., entitled, “Mail Preparation Copier With Mailing Address Identifications” relates to a digital copier with mail preparation functions. These functions include a document input scanner that derives an electronic representation of an original document and a document editor that is responsive to operator commands input from a user interface. A source of sheets and envelopes are fed to the printer. The printer is controlled to create an image on the selected sheet or envelope according to the created envelope image. Postage amount is generated in response to received information about the weight of a document. A document creator combines the image from an identified area with a pre-stored envelope image. This system, however, does not control a printhead to enable either a tape or an envelope to be printed, which includes postage indicia and additional information.
What is needed is an improved method and apparatus that permits a print module to print postal indicia and other information by moving the position of the print module and thereby achieve improved usage of the medium.